Most healthcare administration sits outside the core system

What practical NHS automation can offer Australian and New Zealand care organisations

Many healthcare organisations already have core systems for clinical records, finance, workforce and service delivery. The administrative pressure often sits between those systems, in the emails, spreadsheets, forms and manual approvals that teams still rely on to keep everyday work moving.

In the United Kingdom, DigPacks has been working with NHS, public sector and commercial organisations to address that operational layer through applications, automation and AI built on Microsoft Power Platform.

Through their partnership, Sognos and DigPacks are now assessing and localising a selected group of these capabilities for Australia and New Zealand, with regulatory fit, integration, data arrangements and support models considered before any local deployment.

Digital transformation in healthcare is often framed as a major system replacement or a long, organisation-wide program. Yet some of the most persistent pressures facing healthcare teams come from the smaller processes that sit around their core clinical, workforce and corporate systems.

Risk assessments are managed through spreadsheets. Staff requests move between email inboxes. Privacy assessments depend on documents and manual approvals. Vaccination programs require repeated follow-up. Internal support teams spend significant time answering routine questions and sorting service requests that arrive through multiple channels.

Individually, these processes may not appear transformational. Together, they consume valuable time, make compliance harder to demonstrate and leave leaders without a clear view of what is happening across their organisation.

This is the space in which UK Microsoft partner DigPacks has been working with the NHS, and the attraction is not another broad promise of digital transformation. It is about taking a process that is slow, fragmented or difficult to govern and making it easier to complete, track and improve.

Working in the gaps around core systems

DigPacks publicly reports that it supports 59 organisations across 11 UK regions, including 40 NHS and Integrated Care Board partners. Its customer list includes Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, East London NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Velindre University NHS Trust.

Founded in 2019, DigPacks also reports more than 10,000 hours saved annually through automation, more than 20,000 applications and referrals processed each year, and reductions of up to 85 per cent in manual processing time. At Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, low-code solutions support a workforce of approximately 4,500 people.

Those results are grounded in a practical delivery model that uses Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Dataverse and Copilot capabilities to improve specific workflows. Rather than automatically adding another standalone platform, the work can sit within the Microsoft environment an organisation already uses.

Start with the work causing the most friction

This approach starts with the work causing the most friction. Rather than leading with large-scale system replacement, it focuses on the processes where teams are losing time through email, spreadsheets, forms, duplicate entry and limited visibility. The conversation is not necessarily about replacing an organisation’s entire clinical or corporate system. It is about improving the work that happens around those systems and giving staff a clearer, more consistent way to complete it.

As Sanjay Tailor, Director at DigPacks, explains, practical improvement is often more valuable than pursuing transformation as an abstract goal.

“Our work with NHS organisations has shown that meaningful digital change does not always begin with a major replacement program. It often starts by identifying the processes creating the most pressure for teams and redesigning them, so they are simpler, more visible and easier to govern.”

That distinction matters in healthcare because even a seemingly straightforward process may involve clinical governance, privacy, workforce responsibilities, approval pathways and audit evidence. The application may be small, but the operational and regulatory consequences are not.

From broad transformation to measurable operational improvement

The value of this approach can be seen in the way DigPacks addresses specific operational problems.

The DigPacks Risk Management App replaces fragmented registers and manual review processes with configurable assessments, branching logic, action tracking, approvals, reminders and reporting. DigPacks reports 60 per cent fewer missed reviews and a 40 per cent reduction in time spent on risk reporting after implementation.

Ligature Solution and Safety Lens extend this approach into the environments where care and support are delivered. Where photographs can be lawfully and appropriately captured, including with any required consent, the AI agent analyses images of a room or service environment and produces a structured draft risk report for staff review.

The capability may be relevant to hospital-in-the-home, residential aged care, National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) providers, Supported Independent Living, mental health and community care, particularly where teams conduct environmental assessments across multiple sites or in participants’ homes. AI supports the assessment process, but staff remain responsible for considering the context, confirming the findings and approving the final record.

Sanjay says this balance between automation and human accountability is essential in healthcare.

“AI should help healthcare teams complete work more consistently and give them better access to information, but it should not remove professional judgement or organisational accountability. The strongest applications are those that support people to make better decisions while keeping the appropriate governance in place.”

People workflows and AI agents

Healthcare and community care organisations employ diverse workforces that may include clinicians, care teams, support workers, administrators, contractors and mobile staff.

DigPacks has developed workforce and HR solutions for NHS and public sector teams, including recruitment, onboarding, staff changes, flexible working requests and self-service. Its PeoplePal/People+ AI agents are designed to help staff find answers and navigate common people processes without sending every routine query to an HR inbox.

The capability can include self-service access for personal information changes, leave enquiries, flexible working requests and other high-volume HR processes. Structured approvals and audit histories provide better visibility for employees, managers and HR teams while reducing the reliance on email and manually managed forms.

For large organisations with dispersed teams, these workflows can reduce the volume of routine administration while creating a more consistent staff experience.

Improving vaccination program management

DigPacks’ Vaccination Hub supports clinic setup, appointment scheduling, staff self-service, external vaccination recording and centralised reporting. In its Hertfordshire Partnerships Healthcare case study, DigPacks reports that the platform has managed more than 10,000 vaccinations and reclaimed 100 days of effort for the trust since deployment.

For Australian use, a vaccination workflow would need to support local record-keeping and reporting requirements. Recognised vaccination providers are required to report specified vaccinations to the Australian Immunisation Register, while healthcare workers and students may also be subject to state or territory requirements. The product would therefore need to be configured and, where required, integrated for the relevant jurisdiction rather than treated as ready-made compliance.

DigPacks also offers a School-Aged Immunisation Service that digitises consent, scheduling and vaccination records. Its workflow has an obvious relationship to state and territory school immunisation programs here in Australia.

Privacy Impact Assessments and service management

Privacy assessment is another process frequently managed through documents, email exchanges and manual approval chains.

DigPacks has developed a structured assessment workflow that captures the required information, routes the assessment through appropriate review and approval stages, and maintains a clear audit history.

For the Australian market, Sognos and DigPacks are adapting this capability, built by DigPacks as a Data Protection Impact Assessment, into a Privacy Impact Assessment application and supporting agent. This includes aligning the terminology, questions, approval roles and governance requirements with the Australian Privacy Principles and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).and the state and territory health and privacy laws that apply in the relevant jurisdiction.

In New Zealand, localisation would need to reflect the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020, taking account of the relevant privacy and health information requirements.

The agent can guide users through the assessment, identify missing information and make the process easier to navigate. Responsibility for the final decision remains with the organisation’s privacy, governance or project team.

This is an important principle when introducing AI into processes involving sensitive personal and health information. Technology can improve consistency and reduce manual effort, but accountability cannot be delegated to an agent.

The same principle applies to internal technology support. A structured IT service management tool can give staff one place to raise and track requests, while the FixIT Agent supports troubleshooting, ticketing and knowledge retrieval. The objective is not to remove access to IT support, but to reduce repetitive requests so internal teams can focus on complex incidents, cybersecurity, continuity and improvement.

Why the NHS experience is relevant locally

Australia and New Zealand do not operate under the same health system as the UK. NHS terminology, workforce structures, privacy requirements and integration points cannot simply be copied into another market.

The operational challenges, however, are highly recognisable.

Hospitals, community health services, aged care organisations, disability providers, mental health services and not-for-profit care organisations frequently operate across multiple sites, services and funding programs. Their teams work across facilities, offices and people’s homes, while leaders must demonstrate that services are safe, workforce obligations are being met, and organisational decisions can be supported by reliable records.

At the same time, reform across aged care, disability and mental health is increasing expectations around governance, safeguarding, workforce accountability and documentation.

Regulatory obligations are also increasing. The Aged Care Act 2024 and strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards took effect on 1 November 2025, introducing a new provider registration model and more detailed, measurable standards. From 1 July 2026, providers of supported independent living must also be registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. These changes increase the importance of consistent records, clear ownership, review schedules and audit-ready evidence.

Many larger providers and public sector organisations have also invested in Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 or Power Platform. This creates an opportunity to improve specific processes within an established Microsoft environment rather than adding another disconnected system.

The value of the NHS experience lies in the work that has already been done to understand the problem, design the workflow and test the application in a complex healthcare setting. The local work begins from there.

Localisation is part of the product

The current areas being assessed for Australia and New Zealand include Risk Management and Safety Lens, People and HR workflow capabilities with AI agents, Vaccination Hub, a localised Privacy Impact Assessment workflow and agent, and an IT service management tool with FixIT Agent.

The partnership combines DigPacks’ NHS delivery experience with Sognos’ knowledge of Australian and New Zealand health, social and community care, Microsoft delivery capability and understanding of complex frontline environments.

Local buyers will also expect clear answers about data sovereignty and delivery responsibility: where data will be hosted, whether the solution is deployed in the customer’s Microsoft environment, who can access it for support, what support hours apply, and how intellectual property and data ownership are documented. These matters will vary by solution and deployment, and they must be resolved through solution design and contracting rather than assumed from the UK implementation.

Localisation also means mapping the right terminology, consent model, privacy obligations, workforce roles, clinical or operational approvals, integrations and escalation pathways. AI agents must use approved information, operate within defined permissions and hand work to a person when judgement or accountability is required.

HR applications may need to connect with different recruitment, payroll and workforce systems. Privacy workflows must reflect Australian and New Zealand requirements. Risk assessments need to match the environments and service models in which they will be used. AI agents must operate from approved information, with clear escalation pathways and appropriate human oversight.

Rick Vosila, Chief Commercial Officer at Sognos, says this local context is what turns an existing product into a useful operational solution.

“Healthcare organisations are not looking for technology for its own sake. They want practical improvements that reduce pressure on their teams, strengthen governance and fit with the systems and processes they already rely on.”

A practical model for healthcare innovation

The work taking place across the NHS offers a useful model for healthcare organisations in Australia and New Zealand.

Start with a real operational problem and find out where staff are losing time. Improve visibility and accountability, using the digital environment the organisation already has where that makes sense, and keep people responsible for decisions when artificial intelligence is assisting the process. Measure the result in time saved, reviews completed, requests resolved and information made easier to find.

Healthcare organisations do not need more disconnected technology. They need practical solutions that reduce unnecessary work, strengthen governance and make complex services easier to manage.

Sognos and DigPacks are bringing that experience closer to home, combining what the NHS work has already proven with the local knowledge needed to make it count in Australian and New Zealand care settings.

Explore the fit for your organisation

Speak with Sognos about the operational processes creating the most friction and which capabilities may be appropriate to assess. Contact Sognos

About Sognos

Sognos is a Microsoft Solutions Partner delivering business solutions for health, social and community care organisations across Australia and New Zealand. Its work is designed around complex service delivery, frontline teams, mobile workforces and regulatory accountability.

About DigPacks

DigPacks is a UK Microsoft Solutions Partner specialising in applications, automation, data and AI. It works with NHS, public sector and commercial organisations to improve operations, workforce processes, compliance and governance.